Thomas Drake: You're Automatically Suspicious Until Proven Otherwise

colinneagle writes "RT had a very interesting interview with former NSA official turned whistleblower Thomas A. Drake, who said, 'Security has effectively become the State religion; you don't question it. And if you question it, then your loyalty is questioned.' 'Speaking truth of power is very dangerous in today's world,' he added. The interviewer pointed out that investigative journalists are labeled as 'terrorist helpers' for trying to reveal the truth, to which Drake said the government's take is 'you go after the messenger because the last thing you want to do is deal with the message.'" Network World also has a pretty good article on William Binney's keynote at HOPE 9, wherein he revealed some technical details and a bit more background on the NSA's domestic surveillance program. Unfortunately, neither audio or video of the talk are available yet.

Comments

Re:power corrupts

[Applekid]

Because third parties that gain power never get corrupted, right? Oh wait, they do (see Republican party).

The point is that it's cyclical. When a party becomes corrupt, they ought to be ousted. But the political party system in our mathematically flawed election process is built to prevent those in power from losing it to upstarts. This is how political parties become corrupt: because they become entrenched.

Electoral collect, first past the post, no alternative vote, these are concessions against fair voting in an era where it took weeks to get a message from one end of the country to the other. Today? Not so much.

Re:Verified, and will continue

[s.petry]

Look, I have no issue with some people wanting to be a pacifist. All causes need martyrs. What I take exception to is someone telling everyone to be pacifist. Historically large populations that believe this is their only option end up being the victims of genocide. Just ask the 80 million or so Chinese pacifists that were murdered by Mao, or the 30 million Jews that were murdered by Hitler, or the 60 million or so that were murdered by Stalin and Lenin.. Oh wait, you can't because they were all murdered.

No where do I state that a gun is your only option, what I state is that people need to protect that right.. just in case there are no peaceful alternatives.

Lets remember something which you neglected to point out. MLK was assassinated right? As was JFK, as was Bobby Kennedy, as were at least hundreds of other people that spoke out publicly regarding Political Corruption, Equality/Human Rights, the dismantling of our Education system, and the MIC.

This is long but there is a point. Keep this in context as you read.

Would you care to really test your level of reality? How about you review some of the music figures that were assassinated relatively recently and find out their political affiliations and who they were being investigated by? Of course, it's just "those crazy gangsta rappers" right? Keep your hat on your head, I'm not claiming that all of the rumors and stories are true. I'm claiming that it's interesting that certain people were being investigated by certain agencies and ended up dead by assassination. Coincidences with the JFK assassination are interesting, such as police being removed from areas just prior to the assassins starting to shoot, and the same Police showing up at locations over and over and having no reports or reports that were completely fabricated, security video tapes vanish, evidence being destroyed, etc... If you investigate you will start to think, and thinking is pretty scary right? How many times can something be coincidence before it becomes a plot? Interestingly, there were specials on the news regarding the East/West Rap Wars that had no mention of Government agencies investigating and tailing these guys for years, the evidence tampering, etc... we only heard about those "Violent and Crazy N-words". Have you been manipulated in to believing in a reality that does not exist? Since I have been investigating, the preponderance of evidence clearly shows that I have been presented a manipulated reality regarding many of those people. I am not convinced yet, but the best argument for the media presented reality is "The alternative is so far fetched it can't be true" which I hope you see as the self protecting fallacy it is.

The point of that last paragraph is really this: All of those people were publicly asking for peaceful and progressive changes to the Government for the betterment of society. They were pacifists for the most part as well. Who won, the dead guy or the corrupt? I think you know the answer to that question. (The use of the term "corrupt" there is very intentional since I have invested a lot of time investigating many of these assassinations. That is my opinion of "who" and may not match your opinion of "who".)

Now you are probably going to cry "Begging the Question" when you get done reading those two paragraphs but keep the fallacy card in your pocket. That would only be true if I stated that it was all factual, and I was very clear that I was not sure of all the facts. I stated that it was interesting, and worth investigation. Once you start to realize that your reality is being manipulated, I hope it pisses you off and you start to dig in to the truth in more areas.